The California Independent Oil Marketers Association, a trade group for oil distributors, is asking its gas station members to put a label on gas pumps that points out the supposed cost per gallon of the state’s cap-and-trade system. Insisting that it constitutes a “hidden tax,” the group says it is just trying to inform consumers how much they are paying per gallon for the climate change policy.

The amount, estimated by various sources to be around ten to eleven cents per gallon for gasoline and 13 cents per gallon for diesel, is not a tax, but a cost passed on to consumers by the industry. Oil companies got a free pass for a few years, but starting last year had to join the cap-and-trade program and buy allowances for the greenhouse gas emissions they produce.

Of course the point of having them pay is to encourage them to cut emissions, and the money thus collected by the state goes into the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which pays for other programs that further reduce emissions.

But apparently none of that information is included on the label. Nor are other costs that contribute to the price of gas, like the supply fluctuations that followed last year’s refinery fire in Torrance.

Writing in ClimateWire, Anne C. Mulkern quotes Dave Clegern, spokesman for the California Air Resources Board, who points out that “it seems likely customers would really be more interested in the profit margins of the oil industry and public health impacts. . .Why aren’t they posting those figures?”

She writes:

Oil companies are trying to “have it both ways,” said Susan Frank, director of the California Business Alliance for a Clean Economy, a coalition of 1,300 small and mid-sized companies supporting clean energy. Oil companies have opposed labels that said burning gasoline contributes to global warming, she said.

In 2014, Berkeley and San Francisco were debating a label stating that burning gasoline worsens climate change, Frank said. The San Francisco Chronicle said that Catherine Reheis-Boyd, president of oil trade group Western States Petroleum Association, in a letter to the city of Berkeley had called the labels “forced reproductions of the state’s and city’s policy opinions.”

“It’s incredibly hypocritical because the oil industry opposes gas pump labeling except when it reflects their claims of how gas prices may or may not reflect the cost of clean air standards,” Frank said. She added that “no one can definitively” say how much gas prices have gone up because of the state’s clean air policy.

Assemblymember Tom Lackey (R-Palmdale) has supported the labels, calling them a move towards “transparency” that the state legislature won’t take. But if the oil industry really wants transparency, it should include more detail on the labels, including an estimate of the social and health costs of climate change and pollution as well as information about what the cap-and-trade money is funding.

If they did that, consumers might very well be pleased. Ten cents a gallon seems a true bargain, considering that cap and trade is fighting climate change, funding green transportation, fostering healthier communities, and benefiting California’s economy.

“Oil companies got a free pass for a few years, but starting last year had to join”.

Right. As if these taxes aren’t passed on in higher prices to you the end user. Or the refineries leave this state for good. Swell.

JustJake

Such slanted and biased journalism. “Oil companies got a free pass for a few years, but starting last year had to join”. Abject falsehood. Cap & Trade is another example of Jerry Brown trying to source new funding for his pipe dreams, and as the last auction of carbon credits revealed, is failing. California & Quebec… all alone. Cap and trade, at best, only works if the majority of states are involved. They are not and it doesn’t work. It’s a tax, for more government spending on the backs of individuals.

ALSO ON STREETSBLOG

There’s been a lot of media noise about ongoing efforts to pass new climate change legislation in California before the rapidly approaching deadline. One particular op-ed in the Orange County Register adds nothing useful to the debate, but as one of several efforts lately that have been working very hard to obscure facts, it deserves […]

The California Air Resources Board will postpone its decision on strategies to meet 2030 greenhouse gas reduction targets until June. Staff presented a proposed alternative to cap-and-trade that at least one listener called a "straw man."

The major lobby group for the California oil industry has launched a new, and particularly dimwitted, effort to denigrate California’s climate change policies. Californians for Affordable and Reliable Energy, or CARE, one of the Western States Petroleum Association’s front groups (as reported in Streetsblog several years ago), started a new website that purports to show […]

Two Democratic Assemblymembers got the ball rolling on settling the future of California’s cap-and-trade program by introducing A.B. 151 yesterday. The bill would authorize the California Air Resources Board “to utilize a market-based compliance mechanism” to reduce greenhouse gases after 2020, when the current Global Warming Solutions Act expires. There has been controversy about whether […]

As the California legislative session revs up, several committees have been holding oversight hearings on the state’s cap-and-trade system. Last week, the Senate Environmental Quality and the Select Committee on Climate Change and AB 32 Implementation held a joint hearing to discuss California’s successful worldwide leadership on climate change issues. In that hearing, the committee […]

Some members of the mainstream media seem to be enjoying a good rip on California’s climate change policies, especially its cap-and-trade program, heralding its imminent collapse and describing Governor Jerry Brown as desperate and “nervous” about whether he can save it. And some of those media pundits are going a little overboard, like the Los […]